The Inspector Committee met on April 18, and there were a number of items that were discussed. Starting off the meeting, Mike Morgan was elected as the Vice Chair to fill the vacancy from Scott Regan. 

Two years ago, TREC changed how the Legal/SOP course was provided to license holders. Previously, education providers were given an outline to follow, and they would come up with the content to fulfil that. We then decided that, in order to ensure consistency for the course and the content that is provided to the inspectors that were taking it, we would create the full course ourselves and provide the full course for education providers to follow. The first go around was a huge undertaking with staff from TREC and multiple subject matter experts. That course is set to expire at the end of August of this year. This time around, the course had been created, but there was a lot of content that needed to be updated or flat out changed. A writing group has been working for several months to put the new course together. The course was proposed by the IAC to be approved by the Commissioners at their May meeting. Once approved, there will be some final, non-substantive additions to the course, and then it will be submitted to the education providers.  This should give them plenty of opportunity to prepare for its release on September 1.

An evaluation form for the Texas Practicum course has been in the works for some time now. The form is almost complete, but there was some discussion on how the evaluation would actually get to the student, and where it would go from there. Some suggestions were made, and it was sent back to the Education Subcommittee. We would anticipate that this will come before the full IAC again in July.

There was a discussion about the possibility of inspectors being able to post their photograph the TREC website as a means for consumers to ensure that the person inspecting their home is actually the person in their home. Though the suggestion sounds simple enough, through discussions it was realized that there were a number of complications that could come with that. As a result, that discussion ended with no action being taken.

There was a discussion about the IAC possibly creating an actual list of what would be considered a “basic tool” needed for an inspection. The discussion arose due to some concerns about trying to define what is a basic tool and what is a specialized one. After much discussion, it was decided to leave it as it is in the current SOPs. 

There were a lot of changes made to 22 TAC Section 535 as it relates to inspectors on the agenda. Most of these were corrections that needed to be made as a result of the Quadrennial Review done by TREC staff.

Tony Slagle, Deputy Executive Director for TREC, gave a legislative update to the committee. He stated that there is a bill going through the ranks in both houses that would eliminate the Recovery Fund for Inspectors. This was decided since the requirement of professional insurance for inspectors back in 2007, there has been very little requests for reimbursement from the Recovery Fund against inspectors. If this gets approved, then TREC will no longer take Recovery Fund payments as part of the license application process.

The next meeting for the Inspector Advisory Committee will be on July 17 at 10am at TREC headquarters in Austin.  If you would like to attend the meeting, but can’t make it to Austin, there should be a Microsoft Teams link posted on the TREC website once that agenda is posted. That agenda is typically posted at least 10 days from the date of the meeting.